'We have them!' a young soldier shouted, bursting into the cabin. 'We found them, holding the owners of another vessel hostage! One man is wounded, but we managed to take them down without any deaths.'
With a grim, dark look on his face that made the others retreat in fear, Roman gestured for the young soldier to lead on.
The wounded man sat on the deck, his arm wrapped in a red-stained bandage. His accomplice, a shifty, pig-eyed, unshaven man with oily skin, licked his lips nervously as though looking for any chance to escape. Though his hands were tied behind his back, there was nevertheless something latently dangerous about him.
'Where is my wife,' Roman asked the captives in a quiet voice that cause everyone near to go very still and pale.
The pig-eyed man, however, seemed unmoved. 'As you can see, we don't have her.'
Roman raised an eyebrow at this, momentarily stymied by this simple, literal truth. 'All right, then. You haven't got her. You were sent by her father. That leaves the brother-'
'T'weren't him neither,' the pig-eyed man said flatly.
'Oh?' Roman asked him ingenuously, with an air that said there were dire consequences to be paid for mucking him about, 'Then who? And, how do you know this?'
'Because the brother tried to buy us off,' the pig-eyed man told him. 'Tried again this morning. 'Cept we ain't got her, else we would've taken his money-'
He stopped talking as Roman knelt down to inspect the man sitting on the deck. The man flinched as Roman reached for his vest and held it open.
'This is dried blood from an earlier wound.'
'I-'
'He cut himself working,' the pig-eyed man cut in.
'I'll cut your throat if you speak out of turn once more,' Roman said, fixing the pig-eyed man with a glare that shut him up. 'Now,' Roman said, turning his attention back to the wounded man, 'talk!'
'Some of your men took her-!' the man blurted defensively.
'Shut up, shut up!' the pig-eyed man shrieked. 'You idiot-!'
'Gag him,' Roman said to the port authority soldier. When this was done, he said quietly, 'All right. Which of my men are you referring to?'
The man nodded to the port authority soldier. 'One of 'em had on a uniform like his, and two of the other fellas, they were big, built like blacksmiths. They worked at one of the stables-'
The man squawked as Roman grabbed him by his collar and hauled him to his feet. 'Now, you're going to show me which stable.'